Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1887-08-03
THE NEW AMERICAN.
The Species OF Humanity Developed On
the Great Plains OF the West.

the Great Plains OF the West.
The American man, the Drawer inn
sgines, only developes himself and
spreads himself and grows''for all he is
worth" in the Great West. He is moro
free and timber there. and unfolds
those generous peculiarities and large
nessos of humanity which never bios
somed before. The "environment''
has much to do with it. The great
spaces over which he roams contribute
to the enlargement of his mental hori-
zon. There have been races before
who roamed the illimitable desert, but
they travelled on foot or on camel-back,
and were limited in their range. There
was nothing continental about them,
as there is about our railway desert
travellers, who swing along through
thousands of miles of sand and sage
bush with growing contempt for
time and space. But expansive and
great as these people have become under
the new conditions, the Drawer has a
fancy that the development of the race
has only just begun, and that the future
will show us in perfection kind of
man new to the world. Out some-
where on the Santa Fe route, where
the desert of one day was like the des-
ert of the day before, and the Pullman
car rolls and swings over the wide
waste beneath the blue sky day after
day, under its black flag of smoke, in
the early gray of morning, when the
men were waiting theirs turns at the
ablution bowls, slip of boy, per-
haps aged seven, stood balancing HIM
self on his little legs, clad in knicker-
bockers, biding his time, with all the
nonchalance of an old campaigncr.
"How did you sleep, Cap?' asked
well-meaning elderly gentleman.
swell, thank you," was the dignified
response; "as always do on n
sleeping-car." Always doesP Great
horrors! Hardly out of his swaddling-
clothes, and yet he always sleeps well
in sleeper! Was he born OH the
wheels? was he Graded in Putnam
He has always been in motion, proba-
bly,; he was started at thirty miles an
hour, no doubt, this marvellous boy of
our new era. He was not born in a
house at rest, but the locomotive
snatched him along with shrek and
a roar before his eyes were fairly open,
and he was rocked in u section" and
his first sensation of life was that of
moving rapidly over vast arid spaces,
through cattle ranges, and along cam
yons. The effort of quick and easy To-
comotion on character may have been
noted before, but it seems tn t here is
the production of new sort of man,
the direct product of our railway era.
1t is not simply that this boy is mature,
but he must be q different and no.
bier sort of boy than one born, say, at
home on q canal-boat; for whether
he was born on the rail or not, he be-
longs to the railway system of civiliza-
ton. Before he gets into trousers he
is old in experience, and he has dis
counted many of the novelties that usu-
ally break gradually on the pilgrim in
this world. He belongs to the new, cx-
pansive race that must live in motion,
whose proper home is the Pullman
(Which will probably be improved in
time into dustless, sweet-smelling,
well-aired bedroom), and whose do
mestic life will be on the wing, so to
speak. The Interstate commerce bill
will pass him along without friction
from end to end of tho Union, and per-
haps uniform divorce law will
enable him to change his mar
ital relations at any place where
he happens to dine. This promising
lad is only faint intimation of what
we are all coming to when we fully ac-
quire the freedom of the continent, and
come into that expansiveness of feel
ing and of language which character
ises the Great West, II is burst Of
joyous exuberance that comes from the
sense of an illimitable horizon. 1t
shows itself in the tender words of
local newspaper at Bowie, Ariz., on
the death of beloved citizen: "'Dcath
loves a shining mark and she hit
dandy when she turned loose OH JIM"
And also in the closing words of New
Mexico obituary, which the Kansas
Magazine quotes: "Hcr tired spirit
was released from the pain
racking body and scared aloft
to eternal glory at 4:30 Denver
time" We die, as it were, i'm motion.
and we sleep, and there is nowhere any
to our expansion Perhaps
we shall never again know any rest as
we now understand the term-rest
being only change of motion-and we
shall not be able to sleep except on the
ears, and whether we die by Denver
lime or by the ninetieth meridian, we
shall only change our time. Blessed
De this slip of a boy who is man be-
ore he is an infant, and teaches us
what rapid transit can do for our race!
The only thing that can possibly him
ler us in our progress will be second
we have abolished first
Charles Dudley Warner, IN Harper's
Magazine.